Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) International Application No. PCT/IB2006/053395, entitled “FROM POLYMORPHIC EXECUTABLE TO POLYMORPHIC OPERATING SYSTEM”, describes a method for the creation, distribution and execution of polymorphic executable or its variants for the purpose of protecting executable codes.
Executable code is in fact a piece or an expression type of digital information. Protection of intellectual property for digital information, including executable code and digital data (i.e. digital non-executable information), is essential for innovation and the advance of society based on intellectual activities. The aforesaid PCT application describes how other preceding efforts or methods, including the use of checking for correct password, checking for encrypted digital key file, checking for signature provided in hardware, checking for correct password through activation procedure over internet, etc. designed for protecting the value of intellectual activities represented in software programs or executable code are either easily bypassed or require the deployment of specially designed hardware. Such efforts or methods therefore are either simply ineffective or involve additional hardware costs or are not suited to general-purpose computing or processing environment.
The aforesaid PCT application demonstrates how software programs or executable code can be represented in polymorphic forms that are different and yet runnable in different authenticated or authorized states, but un-runnable (for the features contained in the Polymorphic Code Section) in unauthenticated or unauthorized states in a general-purpose computing or processing environment so that intellectual property contained in such software programs or executable code can be best protected. It discloses the method of using uniquely identifiable information, such as a serial number or its derivative, retrieved from hardware or other ways as a key for encryption/decryption of software programs or executable code with hardly breakable or unbreakable algorithm. This can be a solution safeguarding such intellectual activities against those simple and yet effective pirating activities involving copying and simple hacking. Using the method thus disclosed, when used for digital data, the digital data concerned could only be restored and used specific to the Device for which the digital data is designated or encrypted with the specific identifying key derived uniquely from the Device. That means the same piece of digital data is represented differently and uniquely in a polymorphic way (i.e., Polymorphic Digital Data) specific to different Device(s) with different unique identifying keys.